Personal grooming takes on new challenge near the sniffer

Averted a personal grooming crisis the other day. Finally located a working nose-hair clipper. Did a little pruning.

Yeah, go ahead, snort if you want. All you people in your 20s and 30s think it’s never going to happen to you, and by “it” I mean, nose-hair proliferation.

But when you become a male of my particular age, the issues of nostril coiffure are nothing to sneeze at. As the hairs on your head grow thinner, all of your vital hair-growing energy is directed toward the nasal region. You look in the mirror one morning, and you’ll swear someone sprinkled your sinuses with Miracle-Gro.

If you don’t keep it regularly mowed, you’ll end up looking like you’re cultivating some kind of bad mustache. People will think you’re trying for the Adolf Hitler look, which, let me tell you, is never in fashion.

Several years ago, I actually acquired a battery-operated nose-hair clipper at an office gift exchange. I did not trade it in for some other gift, which was my prerogative under the rules of the exchange. The first step toward finding a solution is admitting you have a problem.

Tragically, my clipper went on the blink several months ago. You have no idea what a trauma this was. I tried replacing the batteries. I tried taking it apart and putting it back together. I scanned the phone book in vain for “Nose-Hair Clipper Repairs.” (Note to self: New career opportunity in nose-hair clipper repairs? Niche to be filled?)

Meanwhile, shrub-like vegetation slowly began to edge southward toward my upper lip. What, I asked myself between bouts of sneezing, were my alternatives?

I couldn’t expect any assistance from Betty the Barber. Betty is the best barber in the world, sensitive to the requirements of middle-aged and post-middle-aged men. During every haircut, she discreetly trims back the encroaching fur in that other problem area, the ear. She doesn’t make a big deal of it, but after a haircut you realize that your ears no longer look quite so gerbil-like. Yet she wisely avoids tackling anything near the schnozzola area, probably for two reasons, one being the legal liability and the second being, it’s disgusting.

So I decided I would attempt a low-tech solution. I would make a surgical strike with a pair of scissors.

Remember how your kindergarten teacher told you never to run with scissors? One of the reasons, of course, was that you could poke your eye out. The other reason was that you could poke it up your nostrils, and that, I can now say definitively, is a sensation somewhat like jamming a kabob skewer up your gum line. After a half-hour of feeble and increasingly uncomfortable attempts to clip off one lousy tendril, I declared defeat. As for those scissors, I can no longer stomach the idea of using them to clip coupons.

Eventually, one day while shaving, I committed an act of desperation. I reached up and attempted to yank the offending thatch out by the roots. At first, I couldn’t get enough of a grip, which was highly frustrating. Then, I DID get enough of a grip, which initiated a ten-minute episode of whimpering in the fetal position on the bathroom floor.

No wonder the nostril-wax treatment has never caught on.

So, finally, I acquired a new battery-operated nose-hair clipper. Like any power tool, it has it drawbacks. When inserted, it causes my entire skull to oscillate alarmingly. Then it makes an angry whine not unlike a four-stroke Brush Hog, pushed to its limits.

I don’t care. At least people are no longer calling me “Adolf.”